Allegations of plagiarism, high-level political meddling and sheer poor taste on Sunday marred Russia's choice of three furry mascots to represent the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

Russians chose three mascots -- a cute snow leopard, polar bear and hare -- by popular vote in a seemingly innocent television show late Saturday that aimed to choose a people's mascot.

Eyebrows were first raised when the initial favourite to win the most votes -- a portrayal of Russian Father Christmas Ded Moroz -- was rather undemocratically ditched from the competition by the organisers.

Then the most votes went easily to the mascot which strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had declared his favourite -- the "strong, fast and beautiful" snow leopard.

Prominent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told Moscow Echo radio that it was possible some none too cuddly tricks engineered the result through a rigging of the telephone system.

"Just after Vladimir Putin showed his sympathy for the leopard, its votes climbed sharply," he said.

The snow leopard, who somewhat implausibly moves around on a snowboard, was nowhere to be seen in the initial ratings which were led by the unfortunate Ded Moroz.

"It's hard to imagine a more ridiculous mascot. The snowboarding leopard was practically chosen from on high and is completely unjustified. There is nothing Russian about it," fumed blogger titos on liberal web newspaper gazeta.ru.

Adding to the controversy, the man who designed the bear mascot for the 1980 Moscow Olympics complained that the Sochi bear was a blatant copy.

"This polar bear, everything is taken from mine, the eyes, nose, mouth, smile. I don't like being robbed," Viktor Chizhikov told Moscow Echo.

"Not one of the mascots has the slightest relation to the assigned task," he added.

The grinning polar bear -- who comes with a somewhat superfluous green scarf -- also annoyed the speaker of Russia's upper house Sergei Mironov who said it resembled too closely the bear symbol of ruling party United Russia.

"This is absolutely wrong," said Mironov, who heads the Just Russia opposition party.

AFP